#521: Avoid These Legal Pitfalls: Essential Lawyer Protections, with Jonathan Hawkins

Episode Notes

Transcript

Stephanie Everett (00:12): 

Hey, I’m Stephanie Everett. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:13): 

And I’m Zack. And this is episode 521 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today’s Stephanie talks with Jonathan Hawkins about four things you could do today to protect your law firm. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:26): 

So Zack, you just got to do something. I mean, I’m just going to be honest. I think anyone our age sort of had this on their bucket list at some point in our life probably. I know I did, but you went to space camp. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:40): 

Yes, yes. And to clarify, I went to space camp for adults. I didn’t just find a loophole and wind up in there with a seventh grade class or something. So it was space camp for adults. And so there were a lot of people that were in my same position and we all had a great time. We didn’t have to buy and wear the jumpsuits the entire time, but everybody in my cohort did, because again, all of us had to tell our work that we were taking off a Friday to go to adult space camp. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:13): 

I think we’re going to need to see a picture of that attached when we post this episode out on social media, because I mean, people can see us now. We are doing this in video as well, but you did not wear said jumpsuit unfortunately 

  

Zack Glaser (01:25): 

Today. No, no, no, no. I would be happy to, but yeah, we’ll put a picture out there. Yeah, all of us were in the flight suits, and so it was fun. I say that I was cosplaying my younger self cosplaying an astronaut, and so that was very neat. But we can’t get away from our minds around. We can’t get away from thinking about work sometimes. And I saw some things there that were just really fascinating related to processes. And as you can imagine, or as you know, NASA does a really good job of creating processes. And I saw that firsthand with these books. When we would go on these faux missions, these mock missions to Mars or whatever, we’d be in mission control and alarms would start going off. Well alarm a dash 11, you flip to alarm a dash 11 and here’s the process, here’s the workflow for how to deal with this thing that could potentially come up. And so they’ve worked through all the things that could potentially come up and they have all the steps that you take. And so you flip this switch and if that doesn’t work, you do this thing and really complex things to do. But they could, they put it on a sheet of paper and even I could follow it. Even people that had no training were able to go hit the button. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:51): 

Nice. And did any of those alarms end up launching a group of people into space? 

  

Zack Glaser (02:57): 

Sadly, no. 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:00): 

You were kind of hoping, 

  

Zack Glaser (03:01): 

Right? Every one of us, us was hoping you’d get into one of the mock space shuttles and you’d be like, I hope this one, I bet they forgot. And they installed an engine on this one. We’re going, 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:15): 

Yeah, it was such a fun movie that eighties 

  

Zack Glaser (03:17): 

Queen Town. Yes. It’s anybody we’re talking about the late eighties movie space camp for your reference. Is it good? Is it worth, 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:30): 

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t really remember. I mean, as a kid I thought it was cool, but I have no idea if it holds up. I don’t think I’ve seen it since then. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:37): 

Well, adult space camp holds up. That was interesting and fun and a nice thing to do. But we had these huge binders of processes, which were impressive to me. 

  

Stephanie Everett (03:50): 

And I think law firm owners, we know that we need to do this. I mean, how amazing would it be to have a, Hey, this thing happens, A 11 button goes off, you go look in the manual and you know how to fix it. But I think it feels very daunting and overwhelming, especially if we’re just getting started of how could I have so many other things to do? And now you want me to spend time creating processes and building an operations manual, even though you know should do it and you need to do it, it kind of gets pushed to the bottom of the list, I think. 

  

Zack Glaser (04:21): 

Oh, absolutely. With everybody that I coach, they feel that way. But the interesting thing about these processes is it’s a binder table of contents on the top, and then there was just a sheet of paper essentially for each one of the things that you have to do. It wasn’t super complex. I can see where you can make each piece of paper each process one at a time and you’re just filling that binder up, whether it’s an electronic binder or a physical binder. You’re just filling that binder up as you go and as you come across these things, 

  

Stephanie Everett (04:52): 

Perfect. And the best reminder I tell everyone, just hit record your screen, narrate what you’re doing. Hey, I’m going to go run payroll, so I’m going to open up our payroll system and I’m going to do this. And you just narrate that and then you can easily now turn that into your first operating system. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:10): 

Oh yeah. Video recording is fantastic. I think that’s great advice. Well, now here is Stephanie’s conversation with Jonathan. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (05:18): 

Hi, I’m Jonathan Hawkins. I’m the founder of Law Firm gc. We’re a boutique law firm based here in Atlanta, Georgia, and we represent primarily lawyers and law firms. I guess as outside general counsel. 

  

Stephanie Everett (05:34): 

Yeah, you’re a lawyer’s lawyer. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (05:36): 

I try to be. Yeah, 

  

Stephanie Everett (05:38): 

That’s good. That’s an easy elevator pitch. What do you do? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (05:41): 

Well, I tell people that I, I represent lawyers and they have always immediately gone to O in legal malpractice. And historically, no, but we just had a new attorney join us last week and he fills the gap. He does the legal malpractice defense. So now we do it all. 

  

Stephanie Everett (05:59): 

Yes. Well, which is what we’re going to talk about today, which I think is there are some things that lawyers specifically could put in place to help them, not necessarily with malpractice, but protect themselves maybe a little bit more. Is that fair? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (06:15): 

Yeah, yeah. That’s part of what we do. Part of it is protect what you’re building. So yeah, I just call it the pillars of law Firm protection is what I call it, and it’s a lot, but it’s really sort of boils down to really four categories in my mind at least. And one is lawyers want to protect themselves from their clients. That’s part of it. And we can dive into all this. And another part is number two, protect themselves from their staff, employees and lawyers at their firm. And three from third parties. That could be vendors and others, co-counsel, whatever it is. And then the last category is protect law firm owners from themselves. They need it sometimes. 

  

Stephanie Everett (07:06): 

Fair, fair. Alright, well, where should we start? I love the framework and I think it’s so necessary. So what should we do? What do we do? First we got to protect ourselves from clients. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (07:17): 

I’d say clients. I mean, whether you’re a solo or managing partner of a gigantic firm, it all starts with the clients and that’s usually where I start and what does every firm need with their clients? And that’s a retainer agreement. So that’s usually where we start. Number one, put it in writing. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Obviously if you do contingency work, it’s required to be in writing, but it’s a good place to start. So you can put in protections for yourself. You set expectations with the client, you can put in what your expectations are of the client and a variety of other things. And so that’s what we start with usually. 

  

Stephanie Everett (08:02): 

I’m curious, I have, so I have given advice, our suggestions or thoughts to people on the show before that we don’t necessarily need to over lawyer our legal documents, write in plain English, use bullet points, use words that clients will actually read and understand. And we even have done a fun exercise at our lab event where we’ve encouraged people to try drawing a contract with figures, with pictures, and that always just gets your brain thinking differently. So that’s been an interesting, fun exercise. But I’m curious what advice and thoughts you have around that. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (08:42): 

It’s interesting. There are two camps. I say generally and I want it to be a page or less camp. And then I want everything in the world in there. It could be 20 pages long camp. And I’m the opinion that it needs to be long enough to put everything in there you need. And so there are, certainly in Georgia, there’s some magic words for certain types of provisions that need to be in there to get protection under the case law. And so there are certain provisions that there are magic words you want to put in there and you can’t bullet point those. And I get it. Today’s world, I think it is really hard. I’ve had some clients where they’re like, it’s got to be a page. And all of a sudden the font’s like six are like, we’ll get on a page, but the margins are completely to the edge and the font’s small. So I get both sides and I get we want it to not be over lawyered or too complicated. And I think for large parts of it, you can do that. But again, I think there are some things that you need the magic words in there. 

  

Stephanie Everett (09:49): 

And if people are in other states, I mean, is that just in the case law? Did the bar associations usually have some help here or, 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (09:59): 

So there are certain ethical requirements that would shape what can go in your retainer agreement. There’s certainly some things that are prohibited. There are certain ethics opinions from various states that maybe prohibit certain things and allow certain things, for example. And some of that would shade into case law too. So arbitration provisions, that’s a perfect example. Do you include them or not? People? I see ’em all the time. And generally speaking depends on your state. But generally speaking, you got to meet an informed consent standard with a client. Since you are sort of the fiduciary for the client, you’ve got layout what it means to be in arbitration versus not, what the cost might be, what rights they might be given up. And so in my opinion, if you’re going to include an arbitration clause, and I think some states would agree with this, it’s going to be long. It’s not going to be a one-pager. You’ve got to just lay out of this stuff. And if you don’t have that and just have a one line or a two line arbitration provision, it’s probably not going to be enforceable. 

  

Stephanie Everett (11:11): 

Okay. I like that. I didn’t like arbitration. I mean, as a lawyer, I always found when my clients had to go to arbitration, it always seemed to be more expensive and more of a hassle thing. Court. I don’t know. That was just my experience as a litigator. So I tend to be against them, but what do I remember? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (11:31): 

Well, do you want it to be in the public or do you want it to be sort of confidential? 

  

Stephanie Everett (11:37): 

Oh, that’s a good thought. Okay, I like that. All right, so we have to have an engagement letter. Everyone should have them. You probably might have different clauses or different versions or sometimes, I guess I imagine depending on what you do, but you need to have that. That’s basic. Everyone should do that, right? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (11:54): 

Absolutely. Okay. Number one, you got to have that in place. So another thing we look at is insurance. You want insurance in place. Obviously malpractice insurance, not every state requires it. Georgia does not. For example, I know some attorneys out there that they on purpose, they purposely say, I am not getting insurance. They feel like if they have it, it’s a target for attorneys to come after them. That is not my opinion. I would rather have coverage than not. And then if you have an office, if you have employees, there’s more insurance you’re going to end up stacking on top of that. So we would do an insurance review, make sure we think you’re adequately covered. Nowadays you’ve got cyber and all sorts of stuff. 

  

Stephanie Everett (12:44): 

Yeah, I like personally being over-insured, I don’t know. But even having a personal umbrella, do you even go to that level of detail? That’s an extra layer. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (12:54): 

That’s really more of a, I do have some law firms that have excess coverage for their law firm, but absolutely everybody I talk to lawyer or not, I tell ’em, you need to think about umbrella. I mean, I got too much insurance. 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:09): 

Me too. My insurance salesman sends me very nice holiday gifts and I know why 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (13:16): 

You should get that vacation down to Mexico, right? 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:20): 

Oh yeah. I need to. Okay. Alright, so we got engagement letter, we got insurance. Then what’s next? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (13:28): 

You want to make sure your conflict process is in place and then there’s a variety. 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:34): 

Ideally using software, not 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (13:37): 

Paper. That would be part of it for sure. So depends on how many people are in your firm, but obviously you run a conflict check through your software now, garbage in, garbage out. So for all your matters, you got to really make sure you’ve input in all the parties, all the related parties, all the owners, that kind of thing, depending on what kind of a practice you have. So certainly do that first. But then you got to send emails, I think to all the attorneys. Make sure my practice, for example, I’ll give you a perfect example. I do a lot of law firm breakups and I’m known for that here in Atlanta. And it is pretty common that both sides of the V will call me. And so depending on who calls me first, then all of a sudden I’m conflicted out of the second. And as we grow, we need to make sure if they call somebody else in the office. So that’s sort of an emergency email that needs to go out. It’s not going to be in the system yet. So that’s really important because take it down the line you represent or you think you represent one side of it and then your partner down the hall thinks they represent the other side, then you represent either of them at that point. 

  

Stephanie Everett (14:54): 

And is it whoever calls you first? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (14:57): 

Generally that’s how I’ve done it. I’m like, 

  

Stephanie Everett (15:00): 

I kind of want to ask you. You can tell me you don’t want, but I’m like, do you ever get the one that you’re like, ah, I wish you’d called me second. I wanted the other one. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (15:10): 

Well, I guess I could not answer the phone and see if they leave a message. I guess I could do that. But yeah, once you talk to ’em, you’re done. You can’t, right? 

  

Stephanie Everett (15:20): 

Yeah. So then you’re like, oh, okay, guess I got you. Hope I got the good one. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (15:26): 

Yeah. And then there’s a variety of other smaller things that we would do to when I say protect from the client, but really it’s the engagement letter. Conflict process and insurance is what I would focus on as to clients. And then we can move on to some of the others if you like. 

  

Stephanie Everett (15:45): 

Yeah, let’s do it. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (15:48): 

So yeah, so once you start to grow, you’ll have staff, you’ll have employees, you’ll have maybe more lawyers. And so at that point you want written policies, employee handbook type thing, even if you think you’re not big enough for it, I have seen scenarios where you wish you had had a written policy that was signed by your staff that you can pull out later. And it just, again, it’s another expectation setting document. And there’s lots you can do with that. I’m sure you, you’ve probably played with those over the years with some of your Lawyerist folks I’m sure. 

  

Stephanie Everett (16:29): 

Yeah, we like people to have ’em. I mean, clearly we tell people, you guys set expectations. That’s just number one when you have a team member, and sometimes I think, I mean we’ve been guilty of this where we thought we set expectations and then you go back and look and you’re like, well, did we say this clearly as we want it? So we’re always even revisiting things. But yes, I tell people I can’t draft their handbook. I think that’s legal work and I’m not qualified to do that. But for sure I can help them think about policies they want and what they need to have. And then I advise them, yes, you absolutely want them. You want ’em written down and to be clear. So I love that advice. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (17:10): 

And you’ve got what I call your semi standard employee handbook type policies. But then there’s some other policies that may come up that you may just want to institute. For example, one that we did a couple of years ago for a firm, bigger firm that had a lot of lawyers, and they were concerned that there may be some sort of abusive litigation or sanctioned threat against one of their lawyers that they didn’t know about and that they wouldn’t find out about until the sanction came down and it would be assessed against the firm as well as the lawyer. And so we drafted a pretty straightforward policy that says if you ever get threatened with sanctions, you got to sort of run it up the chain so then management could look at it and try to fix it or take action if they wanted. At least they’d know about it before they got sanctioned. So things like that. 

  

Stephanie Everett (18:03): 

Yeah, I mean that makes sense that you would want to know that, but you’re right, the letter usually just comes to the lawyer that’s on the list, on the letter. So then yeah, you wouldn’t even know. That’s kind of scary. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (18:15): 

And the firm is always going to get pot with the attorney. 

  

Stephanie Everett (18:19): 

Okay, that’s a good one. Are there any others that are outside the normal bounds that you think can think of? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (18:25): 

I know I have some others. I’m trying to think. Maybe let’s talk for a minute. I may think of some more, but some other things that we do for firms, and this is interesting, A lot of firms don’t do this, but have their staff sign NDA type documents. And there can be various levels. I mean, certainly you want to let them know the importance of keeping client information confidential and you want that in writing, you want it signed, you want explain it to them, but then you’ve got firm information that you don’t really want out in the world. Probably somebody can always reach the agreement, but typically when it’s in an agreement, it sort of elevates the seriousness of it and educates at the same time. So more and more we’re seeing firms do that with staff members. And then the other aspect is agreements with their lawyers. 

  

(19:32): 

That’s something we do a lot of. Some firms probably need it more than others, in my opinion. If you’re a contingency law firm owner and you have attorneys that come in, you want to protect the firm because as we all know, you can’t have restrictive covenants. Lawyers can leave and clients get to choose. So a big fear of a lot of contingency firm owners is we’re going to get an attorney in there, we’re going to train ’em up, we’re going to give ’em all of our clients, and then they’re going to leave and take ’em all. And there are a few things you can do, but not a whole lot. But if you have an agreement, there are some things you can do. 

  

Stephanie Everett (20:15): 

Okay, that makes sense. Obviously we know that confidentiality is so important for law firms. Do you also advise, it just kind of occurred to me an annual almost check-in with the team. Hey, we’re going to do a training every year. We’re going to recommit to this because you do say it once, but then people get loose in the enforcement of rules. And I’m kind of curious too. So that’s kind of part one, but then is there any benefit of if you do get popped for something, if you can go back and show that you were proactively training your team and doing things or that you’re just kind of out of luck there? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (20:58): 

It won’t hurt. I mean, if you have something, I think certainly that’s probably mitigating factor. That was part of, with the sanction policy that we came up with, that was part of the thinking. There was worst case scenario, you could go to the court and say, Hey, they were supposed to tell us and we had this policy and they didn’t. So don’t pop us, or at least not as much. But yeah, I think that’s a good idea to periodically remind your team. It’s beaten into us in law school and the ethics rules and all that. We know we’re supposed to keep things confidential, but a lot of times our staff, they don’t understand the importance of it and we are on the hook for anything they do. So if they go on social media and just start spilling the means about some of your clients, that would be bad. 

  

Stephanie Everett (21:49): 

I know we’ve all heard the example of at the baseball game and telling the friend next to you, listen to this craziness that happened at work today when the person, I mean, we know they’re not supposed to do that, but even worse, I think the stories we’ve, I know you and I grew up hearing the same or stories of then the client or the opposing counsel or somebody was in the seat behind and heard all the things and that’s pretty bad. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (22:12): 

That’s bad. 

  

Stephanie Everett (22:13): 

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I mean, it’s bad. We shouldn’t have to remind people, but we do need to remind people don’t do these things. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (22:22): 

And that goes back to sometimes this is in the handbook, but a social media policy that’s big, and it might be different for the lawyers aspects of it might be different for lawyers than the staff because then you get into some of the sort of marketing ethics issues, and so you just want to make sure if they’re doing it and they’re sort of putting themselves out there as a representative of the firm, you want to make sure that it’s not violating the ethics rules, for example. 

  

Stephanie Everett (22:54): 

Yeah, fair. Yeah, those are all good points. All right, what else do we need to do? Love all this. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (23:00): 

So the other thing I’ll say, lawyers lawyers, come and go. Your folks come and go. We hate it when it happens. Most of the time. I guess sometimes might be relieved, but just expect it. No one is going to create a culture in a place where people want to stay. If people leave, don’t hold it against them, but be ready for it. So this is a little more fact specific and I can’t give you just a blanket piece of advice, but it’s really sort of build your firm knowing or expecting people to come and go. And so what that might mean for one lawyer or owner might be different for, but expect it, build it for that, and then when it happens, you’ll be ready. 

  

Stephanie Everett (23:52): 

Yeah, and I mean, super curious thing. I mean, I was at a conference last week and we saw the Microsoft people demoing some features of copilot that I probably shouldn’t even mention here. I don’t know that I’m quite qualified yet, but now you’ll have the ability to go in and basically ask copilot to help you see, did this employee download client files information, contact information? What did they do in their last 90 days before they gave you notice? So stay tuned on that. I mean, I learned enough to open my eyes and be like, oh wow, that’s interesting. So I mean, we’ve always had that ability and most people put in their handbooks and their policies that what you do in your email and things belongs to the firm and I have the right to go see it. But how many of us actually would go and figure out the process to get into the tech to do that? Right. We know we don’t, and employees kind of know we don’t. And I think that’s going to change big time with some of these tools that we saw last week anyway. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (24:55): 

That’s amazing. I mean, it used to be you had to go hire a forensic expert and spend tens of thousands of dollars. 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:02): 

Right now you’re just going to ask chat or copilot, Hey, what’s this person been doing that they just gave notice and I need to know? And it’s just going to run these crazy reports for you. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (25:11): 

Well, hopefully it doesn’t hallucinate and falsely accuse someone. Right. 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:15): 

Well, I can’t speak to that yet, but yes. Yeah. Alright. And then are we on to third parties? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (25:24): 

Yeah. So the third pillar is sort of third party, and I put potential co-counsel in that bucket too. So obviously if you have co-counsel, you want to have a co-counsel agreement. I’ve done a lot of fee disputes where it’s, I thought the deal was this and well no, it’s always been that, but they have nothing in writing and it’s really hard to enforce that, particularly when it’s these contingency fees. So get those in writing for sure. And some of the other things that you have to worry about is successor counsel. You got attorney liens either that you need to file or they’re coming at you because you are the successor counsel mean the third party threats are just the list goes on and on. Cyber huge and it is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So the cyber threat, obviously we talked about insurance earlier, but this goes back to a training component. You can set up technology and it’ll help some respect, but it’s really the users that let people in. 

  

Stephanie Everett (26:41): 

For sure. I know we subscribe to some service and they send out fake emails to try to catch us doing bad things. So that’s part of the training is like, oh, you shouldn’t have clicked on that. Glad we caught you. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (26:57): 

Well, the emails I get now, it’s like they purport to be from my employees and they say we want to change our direct deposit information. I get one of those a week now. It’s crazy. 

  

Stephanie Everett (27:11): 

Yeah. My team members get a lot of text messages from me that are signed, my full name, and that always cracks us up because I’m like, yeah, you guys know that I’m texting you and signing my text messages with my full name. But yeah, we got to watch out. One almost got through the other day, somebody set up, it looked like I had said, yeah, sorry, we didn’t pay that invoice. Send it to this email. Tell ’em I okayed you to pay it to pay it right away. And luckily our accounts payable person sent it to me and was like, I’m so sorry Stephanie, we don’t have this. Should we go ahead and pay it? I was like, thank goodness you asked me. I was like, look at that email. That’s not even my email address. But it was close. My email is Stephanie at Lawyerist and they made it Stephanie dot Everett at Lawyerist. It looked like it, like it was close to my email address, but it was scam. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (28:03): 

It’s crazy. Lemme tell you this one, this is the brand new one. Okay, I’ve never heard this one. We’ve all heard the fake check. I want to retain you and I’ll send you the retainer check or whatever it was, and then you deposit it and you send it back. So this one happened to me last two weeks. So I posted some job postings on LinkedIn, one for an attorney and one for a paralegal, and then I started getting emails and messages on LinkedIn maybe within a week, and they’re like, I’m excited to do the internship. And at first I was like, they have a mistake, and I was deleted it. Then I started getting phone calls. So somebody called me and he says, I answered and he said, this is so-and-so you just hired me. And I’m like, what are you talking about? He’s like, yeah, I applied for the internship and it was basically a riff off of that check scam from what I can tell. 

  

(28:55): 

So they were posting jobs at law school, job boards saying they were me. They went through this entire ruse. One guy said they went as far as to call his references. Yeah. And then they say, we’re going to send you a check. We want you to deposit it and buy some equipment that you’re going to need to work virtually. Then that’s when I started getting the calls. They’re like, what is this? What do I do? I’m like, that is not me. I guess the rest of the scam was they deposit it and they say, nevermind, we’re withdrawing the offer. Send it back. But I mean, threats are everywhere. It’s crazy. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:38): 

That’s kind of scary. People were posing as you posting on job and calling references 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (29:45): 

And it was across the country. Had somebody from Arizona, somebody from I think New Orleans, somebody from Canada, it was all over. 

  

Stephanie Everett (29:55): 

And there’s really at that point you can’t go. I mean, get those down. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (30:02): 

I mean 

  

Stephanie Everett (30:03): 

You can report it, but it’s not like a posting you could take down. That’s 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (30:06): 

Crazy. I mean, I reported it to LinkedIn. I mean, I guess I could take the time and call every law school in the US and tell ’em, Hey, it’s not me. Yeah. 

  

Stephanie Everett (30:19): 

Wow. Okay. I’m glad you shared that with us. That should scare everybody. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (30:24): 

It’s scary out there. Yeah. 

  

Stephanie Everett (30:27): 

Okay. What do we need to do to protect us from ourselves? 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (30:32): 

So this is a big one too. I was on a prior episode with you guys and we talked about some of this, but solos for sure need what I call a backup plan. You get hit by a bus, what’s going to happen? And I’ve seen what can go wrong there. And so you certainly want a backup plan in place and that can mean a lot of things. We won’t get into the details since we’ve talked about that before, but that’s big. And the other thing is a big thing is just wellness. That’s been a topic. Law is a stressful job. People can get sucked down into a bad situation if they don’t take care of themselves, both physically, mentally, emotionally, all those things. And I’m not a therapist, but that is something that I highly recommend to everybody. I mean, I exercise every day, every day. I don’t even skip. And if I had covid at one point and it got me off and then it took me a while to go back and I just didn’t feel right. And so that’s something that I tell everybody to do, but I don’t want to sound too preachy, but 

  

Stephanie Everett (31:49): 

I would love for when I like that now when we renew our bar dues, they’re asking for that backup. I can’t wait for the day that it says, what is your wellness plan? What are you doing a step further? Do you have someone to talk to if you need help? Do you have someone to talk to if you’re stressed? When we de-stigmatize the idea, whether it be a therapist or just a friend or a confidant, especially for our solos and our smaller firms, it’s tough. And you need someone, part of what I enjoyed about practicing in a firm was being able to walk down the hall and be like, Hey, I got to run something by you. I mean, I feel like we did that all the time. And that’s because you’re stressed about a case or because something’s happening. All the things that happen. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (32:39): 

It’s funny, I had a coffee with our mutual friend, Aaron Thomas earlier this week and we were both talking about the various groups that are out there and Lawyerist has one of them and there are lots of these, but it’s where law firm owners or lawyers can get together and meet with other lawyers and it’s really a place where you can share ideas and get ideas, but it’s also a place for the emotional support. It can get lonely out there as an owner and you get scared and you’re like, should I do this? And you have other people there to support you. So I recommend people get into some sort of group, whether it’s for business or whatever it is. And it’s good when it’s other lawyers sort of going through some of the same stuff. 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:24): 

Yeah, absolutely. Alright, well Jonathan, you have once again given us a lot of good things to talk about and think about because, and do so. Some people, you have some homework items probably from today. If you heard some of these pillars and you’re thinking, yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve done this, go ahead and take that first step. Don’t put it off. I suspect that’s what most of us do. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (33:48): 

That’s what we do. Alright. I’m guilty too. I 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:51): 

Know. Me too. But I’m going to do something. All right. Thanks for being with me. It was great seeing you again. And yeah, we’ll have you back. We’ll do more. 

  

Jonathan Hawkins (33:59): 

Likewise. Thanks for having me. 

 

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